From the Editor, June 2009

We definitely are living in interesting times. And difficult times. Thanks to global economic fluctuations, businesses large and small have been generally hurting. Consultants, which business can outsource to, tend to be doing well, and others are working for larger companies that are holding on. We encounter, and write to, people in each of these categories. And MacTech wants to help you excel no matter what you're doing.

Seems like people are letting us: year-to-date, MacTech is up 12% compared to the same period last year (2008). There are more articles, more ad pages and more readers. In fact, the issue you're reading now is the largest issue of MacTech since 2001, and it's larger than any other Mac-oriented Magazine in June.

When the competition is fierce, you can't have enough information. Many of you may be reading MacTech for the first time-or the first in a long time-thanks to WWDC. If you're at WWDC, you're doing so to better and advance yourself. That's what we look to do year round. Like WWDC, we cover many segments: IT/Consultants, Developers for OS X and iPhone and those new hybrids-Sys Admins that can develop.

Speaking of WWDC, make sure you get the most out of it. Of course, that means sitting in on sessions and speaking with Apple Engineers. Also, be sure to connect with your peers! This is possibly the most important part of the week. After the week is over, it's unlikely that you'll stay in close contact with any Apple employee that you meet. Nor can they give you personal support the remainder of the year. Hopefully, though, you'll continue to stay in touch with the peers you meet at the conference - be it through public mailing lists, regional meetings (like CocoaHeads, Apple Consultants Network members or other Macintosh User Group-type gatherings) or even directly.

So, what is on our collective mind this month? Well, a little bit of everything. As you can see by the cover, Public Key Encryption (PKI) is weighing on us. In the first of a series, Michele (Mike) Hjörleifsson gives us a gentle introduction to PKI for all of those that need to learn about this important topic.

New author Sengan Baring-Gould shows us a very interesting way to generate a backtrace of the stack for Obj-C. When your program dies a horrible death, and you need to figure out how you got to the point where it actually crashes, this is a great resource.

Michael Göbel and Oliver Pospisil continue their "Inspired by Life" column on starting an independent software company. Great ideas to be found, so, follow along!

This month's Mac in the Shell continues its "Learning Python on the Mac" series and delves into PyObjC, or, accessing native Cocoa and Obj-C using just Python. This column looks at accessing groups via the Address Book.

William Smith returns with another article describing ways to integrate OS X into a Microsoft shop. This time, he teaches all about the commonly found Sharepoint.

Back with another article in his series on software packaging is José Cruz. This month, he tackles a unique way of customizing the installer via a plug-in. Follow him through creating a plug-in using Xcode.

Greg Neagle, once again brings one for the Sys Admin playbook: methods and reasoning behind running scripts on end-user workstations. This is often an area that many system administrators struggle with. Never fear, Greg lays it out clearly.

In his Road to Code column, Dave Dribin covers saving user preferences using NSUserDefaults. Who doesn't like an application that remembers what they like?

There's more, but I'll wrap up by pointing out this month's MacTech Spotlight: Philip Goward and Greg Scown from SmileOnMyMac. SmileOnMyMac has been producing great utility software for OS X for a long time and has been through some ups and downs in the Mac market. We're happy to feature the co-founders of this company this month.